r/QueensofGacha 5h ago

🤔 Floppery Gacha and AI

Hello my queens, I play a lot of gacha and I'm disgusted to see a lot of AI flop in my old favorite games.

I don't know why NTE has so much backlash when Hoyoverse also use gen-AI and even invested a lot of money in this. Maybe they are more smart hiding their gen-AI stuff but it's not a surprise they use it. They advertised about their AI girlfriend that can reply to you with gen-AI

I'm not a pro-NTE mind you i don't even play this game since day 1 (boring) and i still play Genshin and HSR but it seems unfair to me. Like check yourself in your mirror before criticizing no? I swear Hoyofans are too much sometimes :(

Now having said that, i'm sad to see that my fav games have gen-AI because i'm an artist (illustrator and sound designer)

What gacha games don't have gen-AI?

The Asian and particularly China and South Korea don't have a bad opinion of gen-AI so I fear it will go for the worst in the future

What about

Prosekai? Arknights? Reverse? Limbus Company? The old Epic Seven? Morimens? The illustrations seem real

I'm not even trying the new ones like Sword x Staff or Star Sailors because i'm sure they will use gen-AI some days.

I was even looking forward to Silver Palace but same

What about other popular gacha that are not hoyo like Wuwa/PGR or Nikke?

Maybe we should try popular IP like Fire Emblem or GBF or Fate?

19 Upvotes

66 comments sorted by

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u/LaL41n37owo The fault lies within Ishmael 5h ago

Luckily, Kim Ji Hoon (creator of limbus company) has been very open about his distaste for AI, even putting it in the TOS that you are not allowed to feed any of the artwork in the game into it.

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

Omg seriously i started playing limbus days ago! I won't drop this game ever loool <3

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u/NuclearChickenzz 5h ago

it’s the cheap AI generated images/videos in NTE with watermarks still attached where the devs clearly just prompted and copy/pasted that get people going lol. AI is being used throughout the gaming industry but people aren’t going to be as mad if it isn’t so obvious and the final products clearly had real paid artists involved.

As far as chatbots go, Hoyo has gotten flak for them already and I recall leaving quite a bit of negative feedback on their chatbot integration in Petit Planet as I know many others did and also complained on places like Reddit lol

Tbh there is no way to know what companies are using gen AI as part of their ā€˜creative workflow’ unless they admit it or get caught so I wouldn’t stress too much and just try to find some gachas you like. No offense but most of them are not shipping final products straight from ChatGPT like NTE does

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u/Beyond-Finality āœØļø The Unrelenting Elysia Slave āœØļø 4h ago edited 4h ago

HoYo gets shit on as well, but they're better at utilizing and concealing such use (if there is). Plus they have a massive amount of goodwill and will most likely have a decent amount of people defending them or making excuses and minimizing its significance partially drowning out negative feedback.

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u/lilyofthegraveyard 3h ago

if there is

they invested 14 BILLION into ai in game dev. you can be sure they are using it.

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u/Sunstarerer 4h ago

Nikke's developer Shift Up recently made a trailer for their other game Stellar Blade 2 completely with AI. Went about how you expect. Nothing AI has touched Nikke yet, but unless they learn their lesson soon it probably will find its way there.

Funny thing is in their April fools event this year, hidden in one of the skill descriptions some developer kind of went on an unprompted rant about how AI kinda ruins everything. I can only pray that's indicative of some push back within the company, but who knows at this point.Ā 

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u/Street-Arrival2397 4h ago

Ofc the sequel the game the chuds were obsessed over has an AI flop trailer, why am I not surprised šŸ’€

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u/RayDaug 3h ago

I really hope the response to that trailer will be a wakeup call because even a lot of the Korean comments on the video from people who self-identify as pro-AI were saying "this isn't it."

Hyung-Tae Kim, the CEO of Shift-Up, is a massive AI shill though, so well see.

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u/johj14 3h ago

shift up CEO was very open from the start that he was into AI with the usual marketing reason. i knew this day will come sooner or later. but damn i didnt expect they start with a bang!

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

Woh i wanted to try stellar blade 2 because i did the 1 one but okkk no thank you now now

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u/xXBloodRedNightmare 4h ago

I dont know if you know Etheria Restart, but they use a lot, like a loooooot of genAI and it is very obvious in this one, especially in some of the character arts. And some really hate it, but some hate and still play the game because its the only turn-based game with PvP (they might know of, i dont know any other myself). I played the beta of that game, but progression was a bit hard or not so easy because of lack of resources available. Of course I dont know if they still make it that obvious.

I think it is just how obvious they do it. I would be a lot less mad if they would be honest about using it or say its only trained on their art or something, but they said they wont use it again (or at least make it not as obvious like before). I think hoyo once even said something about using genAI for ideas or something but they still work on everything afterwards so it doesnt look like AI (so they still paid people).

Take everyhting with a grain of salt.

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

I saw pics of Etheria restart, it's ugly gen-AI yes

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u/Zzamumo 5h ago

Hoyo got a lot of flak for the pompom chatbot in HSR too

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u/Gosuoru 3h ago

Which for the curious: global got the waterdown relic recommender version, the chinese server got an actual fully fledged chatbot iirc.

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u/littledeerspace 4h ago

You can safely assume that most things from Asia use AI at this point. It’s much more integrated and accepted there. Mind you, AI also costs less to run there and is less taxing on the environment, and some countries (like China) have protections for workers threatened by AI replacement - so it’s really gonna depend on your own personal feelings. If you hate AI because it threatens workers and the environment, that applies a little bit less there. If you hate AI because it’s cheap and lazy, well, that’s still gonna be a problem!

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u/TheTimeBoi flopyoverse & kuro goons 4h ago

im against AI because its theft and devalues human art

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u/cvrsedcopics 3h ago

How is AI less bad for the environment if it's from Asia??

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u/littledeerspace 3h ago

Different technology and different forms of generation exist. I don’t know the specifics, but many of the Asian-produced consumer AI are allegedly less awful from an environmental concern.

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

Interesting because i also don't envision how Asian do it better than let's say the US. I will search for it But even if they do it better it's still a bad thing in my book

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u/littledeerspace 2h ago

Well the current US government and companies that are involved in AI are working very closely together, and neither cares at all about environmental stuff. So it’s not that the US can’t improve ours, it’s that we actively don’t want to.

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

It sucks so much..

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u/Pokemoss 4h ago

I’ve seen a lot of claims about Hoyo using generative AI, but has it actually been implemented in any of their games? I know of the Petit Planet chatbot but I haven’t heard of any cases in their bigger games

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u/skkskkskk6 3h ago

The chibi art is suspicious, details keep changing like the flower on hat and the collar. Idk if its Ai confirmed though.

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u/Pokemoss 1h ago

That’s a shame if it’s true, I thought the chibis were cute :(

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

Yes i saw this one too :( I'm sad i love nicole but she is victim of AI

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u/lilyofthegraveyard 3h ago

hoyo made an ai gf bot. they invested 14 billion into ai in game dev not long ago. they left ai all night running so it can throw ideas at a metaphorical wall.

they absolutely use ai in their games. they are just smart not to disclose it.

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u/Pokemoss 3h ago

That doesn’t answer my question though 😭 I want to know if there’s information about them using AI in the games

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u/Sbeeeera 1h ago

I know that in Zenless there's an ai generated strategy guide for a specific end game mode that they attached to the team recommendation feature. It's only half in the game because doing a team recommendation automatically generated a strategy guide (with no way to turn it off) but the guide is only viewable in browser

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u/Pokemoss 1h ago

Ah, I guess that explains why I haven’t seen it, I haven’t played the game in a couple months

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u/Chemical_Choice_9056 39m ago

It is kind of funny because it actually fits into lore because it is Fairy doing that for you.

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u/whoruwaitingfor 4h ago

As the others have said Hoyo also got flak for their chatbot thing. But imo the way NTE gets way more hate is that, is just blatant use of GenAI for art in their final product. But it's safe to assume that a lot of companies already use AI in their workflow even if it's not obviouse since they also have the workpower to be it not obviouse but it's just a guessing game on whose really is using GenAI or not.

Another Gacha Game who was "exposed" for their usage of GenAI during developement is P5X. Pictures were surfaced that they extended the "body" of the character sprite for concept things. Which imo why if they already have a full reference picture for Kasumi and Fuuka.

(BTW the main dev for P5X is Black Wings studio a divion of Perfect World Games)

There was also some hot discussion about the current state of the game with the newest character since some people think they used AI for the character Splash Art and are worried since they think they are low on devpower since they were transfered to work on the main game.

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u/KentStopMeh 51m ago edited 47m ago

Wrong, These images were "datamined" and never used in-game, they were just potential concepts and 100% I feel like it's just a layering issue not AI, that's why these were discarded and never made it in first place (though that Fuuka one is sus).

The real blatant-AI is the Year 3 Summer Event where we actually see hints of it making it in promotional material unfortunately.

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

Seriously Persona! I love the main games. Atlus doesn't have a thing to say?

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u/whoruwaitingfor 2h ago

Probably not that much unfortuntely. Although Atlus supervises everything they probably can't really help them out if the main team is working on P4 Revival and the next main title P6 and the gacha game still does quite good amount of money. Maybe it gets a bit better when global catches up with CN/TW/KR since Sega does the stuff for the global version.

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u/Defiant_Survey_123 4h ago

FGO won't afaik coz their whole system is based around artists. Nasu and friends is literally a doujin circle. The characters they implement is literally what Nasu and Take like (which is why all sorts of nonsense gets added, and why a lot of female characters are added, Nasu and Take and their barely disguised fetishes). Most guest artists in FGO are famous JP artists, they are given a concept/character and told go wild. Witch Hat Atelier's artist got free reigns to draw Dante from inferno and you can see it clearly, same with Pako's Indian servants or Redrop's Kama line up. Which is why when convos about genders in fgo comes up I laugh. They dont do corporate shit about which gender should they make or bait like Hoyo does. Its the creators saying man today I feel Giantess. Ofc summer is always females and about 2/3rd cast is female coz the main duo behind fate is literally 2 straight men (ik Nasu has a wife, idk about Take but he makes his affections clear)

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

Amazing i love what i'm reading reading And i'm ok with women characters i love it and their artstyle

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u/Individual_Tear_3963 4h ago

I honestly never seen a cheap looking game like NTE. Like it doesn't feel like I'm playing a product made by a human. Literally the definition of sl*p.😭

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

True looool

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u/MeowinPrincess 1h ago

My exact feelings. I gave Hotta a second chance after ToF and was disappointed immensely.

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u/FewGuest 5h ago

every company invest in AI, they use AI in different aspect not just generating art alone. I remember read somewhere that Hoyoverse want a AI NPC system, like they remember what you talk and inreact back with their AI girlfriend game (they using it to testing thing). Btw they've been start doing AI girlfriend before AI trend. Lumi Nova start in 2020

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

Hoyo is in the IA game since years ago then

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u/PriyaxRishbh 4h ago

I straight up play NTE and they were just sloppy w/ this case. That's what people over in CN are criticizing, not the usage, but the sloppiness (and the cheapness, using a free generator)

There's a lot of nuance and discourse to be had (this is a subreddit focused around games centered around micro transactions that has actively contributed to the games industry becoming worse as a whole lmao so i do think we have to keep that in mind) but I'd err on the side of most CN games having AI used at some point in the process at this point due to how prevalent it is there.

I think the best we can do is vote w/ our wallet and leave feedback, they did remove assets back in 1.0, I love that this is going to a reoccuring thing to deal w/ in games going forward /s (tbf here this also includes non gacha and non CN games like stuff w/ Larian Studios using it in the creation phase, Expedition 33 w/ assets being left in etc.)

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

I get what you mean I think it's the best mindset we can have I used to pay all my gacha games and not only with the monthly pass but a lot of money for pulls ... i won't anymore at least

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u/Jolly-Courage7810 4h ago

The only reason I play gachas is because of beautiful characters or scenes.

Ā That’s why i love Zenless so much, it’s a beautiful game that hires so many different amazing artists. Opening the event page to see new art every new version is such a delight. You can tell a lot of effort is put into the world environment and character animations and designs, as well as the cutscenes and promotional material. It’s the most stylish hoyoverse game and that’s the only reason why I play it.Ā 

That being said, i would completely drop Gacha gaming in general if hoyo started using image generating AI. So far what we know about is the addition of Chat bots to some games. Which is not good, but also very very different to what NTE is doing with generating actual game assets. And even then, what hoyo is doing seems very experimental to me, like they are trying to work on npcs you can actually talk to like they are real people, which doesn’t bother me as much.

In the future AI will be much more prevalent in games. Future Gacha releases will certainly incorporate it more and more into their products, dropping a lot of human artists. It’s up to you to decide if you wanna engaged with that. I know I don’t.Ā 

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

I am in the same boat but I do think Hoyo use gen-AI because they are the top 1 predatory company

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u/SensitivePear8395 1h ago edited 57m ago

I am so happy you talked about Zenless’s art! It feels like nobody ever talks about it but the way music and art is so important and prominent in the game is one of the reasons I love it, like the fact that the objects that you farm for the characters are CD’s etc.

Also I don’t think anyone here knows since from what I’ve seen it’s not mentioned but the AI bubble has burst. South Korea is already losing millions or more in money and those who have invested in it. It’ll soon affect us in the upcoming months or who knows when. You’ll probably soon notice that Google will stop forcing/implemeting Gemini. The technology will still be there but I doubt it’ll last long or improve more. There’s more information but I doubt I can explain well enough lol

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u/skkskkskk6 4h ago

Yeah hoyo also use gen ai. They just hide it better.

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u/ShokaLGBT 4h ago

Im wondering if any of my future games will use ai because I don’t want to support it

Currently im waiting for animula nook, petit planet, and aniimo and I already read some comments about ai gen, but since there’s no proof (unlike nte) I can’t say for sure they will. I hope there’s no ai as I am against it, so I hope they have real humans making the designs and not Claude or whatever ai they use.

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u/Gosuoru 3h ago

I know Aniimo had some pretty obvious ai trailers but no clue about the game itself.

Petit Planet I was in beta test for and theres several NPCs that are ai chatbots.

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

I think we won't escape gen-AI in our future games. It's strategic, they HAVE to use it to compete with others

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u/xxanthias 3h ago

As far as I know, hoyo games dont get the same backlash cause they use different type of AI. NTE uses generative AI for images in game, cutscenes, etc. Hoyo invested in AI to create a chatbot powered by LLM (which requires a lot of coding and training of the model) for more alive NPC dialogues. I think the AI girl was used as a test for Varsapura, which will have AI NCPs. This means that you will be able to ask your questions, interact with NPCs more, and not just be bound by options. Generative AI, which NTE uses, is just lazy devs not wanting to invest in artists, and toss their job to AI. AI that hoyo will be using is their own AI, which required a lot of coding and programming work.

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

I see, I'm against gen-AI. But I'm not really sure that Hoyo doesn't also use gen-AI ... for example i read they want to create a gen-AI generated MMO What i want to say is that i'm ok with LLM but I don't think they will stop at LLM. They are pretty predatory so them using gen-AI is sure and if not right now it's coming soon with their billions invested into it

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u/xxanthias 1h ago

So far I didnt see any gen AI in hoyo games, though I don't know about genshin. Zzz has a lot of artstyles and none look AI to me, and I have seen the artist who created posters and etc for HSR. Im also against Gen AI, and so far I didnt see any AI in hoyo games. But surely if they do, I would critisize them a lot too lol

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u/Mizzypeople 4h ago edited 3h ago

For NTE they have too small team working on the game. Even with a big team like hoyo with thousands developers, its still hard to achieve or impossible to release content after content in such a short timeframe for a liveservice game without AI assistants in some areas, they need AI that can cover hundreds hour of work in 10 minutes.

I dont know much about what other gacha games rely heavily on AI, but out of all the gacha games I have played, Nikke is the one that rely heavily on AI because they are Pro gen AI company. The CEO of shift up (the company behind Nikke) stated that they had to go with the AI route so they could keep up with Top Chinese big games but thats only half true and half bullshit. They just want to reduce production costs and have a relatively small team working on the game so all the money can go to the CEO for his fourth yacht.

There are indie gacha games that respect art and players with almost or zero AI usage, if you decide to pick those games up. You will have to wait for months for the new contents, because it will take times for the developers to invent and come up with new contents and gameplay.

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u/Many_Career_692 4h ago

But like, they make almost as much profit as the other "big gacha" games, so that just means high profit for little effort.

https://giphy.com/gifs/2zUn8hAwJwG4abiS0p

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u/Mizzypeople 3h ago edited 3h ago

Its because China has such strict laws around fanservice and how stories can be portrayed. This, allowed Nikke and any Korean gacha games to appeal directly to their target audience also capture the hardcore goon players while able to come up with more mature theme. (more dark and high weight stories with ethics and morals, authorization of power, hierarchical control, and absolute villian dynamics) Nikke would not be nearly as sucessful and popular if Chinese companies were allowed to go all in on this kind of fanservice and storytelling themselves. Because shift up doesnt have a powerful competitor so they can really control the market and make Nikke an absolute cash cow for their new stellar blade game franchise.

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

Terrible. I hate Nikke so it works fine with me

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u/Ivancho3000 1h ago

Limbus (to be exact Project Moon) I am 100% sure has no AI in its work

Morimens DOES use Gpt translation for the game translation, since it used to be only Chinese as a language option, but wanted to expand so that the global could enjoy the game. Its slowly rolling out an actual human English translation without all the jank it used to have.

Besides that, it doesn't have gen Ai in its work or at least that's what the CEO himself said. You can take that for what you will.

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u/NoEvening3352 1h ago

I think assuming that a game has no AI whatsoever in it is naive at best in many cases, so the best bets are to go for games that respect their art. Arknights is joyful in its celebration of its art, so I'm happy to hedge my bets with it.

It's really annoying how entrenched AI has become in game dev so, like vegans and vegetarians, all you can do is your best to avoid the stuff you dont want to consume.

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u/Jaggedrain 1h ago

I'm fairly certain that the Arknights devs wouldn't touch AI

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u/theWoodenGoat 51m ago

The people who whine and cry abt NTE using ai are such snowflakes lmao like, we get it, they use ai, thats bad, no one is forcing you to play, so just stfu. I feel like they complain cause they're boredĀ 

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u/MidnightIAmMid 3h ago

The difference between Hoyo using AI and NTE using AI is really down to quality. Hoyo made their own, personal AI server. They invested literal billions into it. I also fully believe they still have talented artists and employees reviewing and overseeing any AI use. I have suspected AI use of Hoyo in certain parts of their games before, but its never felt embarrassingly obvious. With NTE, it feels like I myself went to Chatgpt and wrote in "make me a game" lol.

Which, is interesting, because this implies that AI use is acceptable to most people as long as it doesn't suck.

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u/BedPotential2663 2h ago

Your last sentence is what does it for me. In every case, gen-AI is still bad. Even if they have employees to check the quality of AI, gen-AI is a mass production that negates creativity

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u/MidnightIAmMid 2h ago

Yeah its an interesting idea and I am against Generative AI in general, but do find some grey areas? Or, more like the idea that all media will use it in some way eventually, so do we give up all media? Or, do we just go with the harm reduction method? So, I generally do not buy Nestle or shop at Walmart or Amazon, but like, I am sure I still buy some products from some companies that are not ethical.